STATEMENT – retrospective use of rapist’s DNA
© Melina Magdalena (12/6/2006)
(written in preparation for tv interview with Channel 10 (Adelaide) news reporter Gerda Jezuchowski)
First of all, this person who was raped is not a victim of rape. She’s a survivor. Moreover, I would like to acknowledge her courage, in reporting the crime to the police. That is not an easy thing to do, and I wish her strength in the journey ahead.
Secondly, it’s bad enough to be raped by someone who is known to you. If it’s not someone you live with, you’re always going to be on tenterhooks, afraid to run into him somewhere unexpectedly, and you wonder who in your social circle knows about him and hasn’t said anything. That’s pretty creepy.
But when you’re raped by a stranger, one of the first questions you ask is – why me? To have such a personal violation, this atrocity committed against you, and then you say – it can’t have been a random attack. It’s so pointless. And after that, you realise that every man is suspect. It could have been the policeman who is interviewing you. It could be the man in front of you at the supermarket checkout. It could be your nephew, your uncle’s best friend, your neighbour, your grandson’s teacher, your mechanic.
So you walk around with this burden of knowing that you are a damaged, violated, broken person. And you know it can happen again, at any moment. Who was it? No one knows. But that rapist knows you now. And he might come back. You might encounter him anywhere and he’ll be laughing about it, because you’re so terrified. There’s no way to prevent it from happening again. There is no such thing as personal safety. You are vulnerable to attack at every minute of every day. You wind yourself up as tight as a spring and you’re ready to be raped again.
After a long time, you get used to being on edge all the time. You live with the fatigue of spending all your energy keeping guard and you modify the way you do things, to try and feel a little bit safer. You worry about the people you love, and hope they never go through what you’ve gone through and you live with the constant regret that those who are closest have seen you at your worst, and you wonder how it’s affected them. And you get on with your life, because what else can you do? It’s either that, or give up and die. But you never forget that you are under siege.
I was raped thirteen years ago when a stranger broke into my home while I was asleep. Even now, after all this time, I do not go to sleep ever, without running through scenarios in my mind. If it happens again tonight, what will I do? Is the phone beside my bed? Do I have a clear escape route? Is there anything nearby that he could hit me or cut me or strangle me with? Have I checked the doors and windows? What will happen to the children if I am murdered tonight? Have I done absolutely everything I can to make sure they will be all right even if I am not?
Thirdly, this business of DNA testing is being twisted to a criminal’s advantage, by conveniently forgetting the purpose for which his DNA was taken and tested in the first place. Police DNA records should be no more sacrosanct than fingerprints. The whole point of a DNA Bank is to assist police to solve crimes, prosecute offenders, and stop further offences from being committed.
If your fingerprints are on file, it is a good deterrent not to commit a crime that might be linked back to the reason your fingerprints were taken in the first place. The same follows for DNA testing. No one is advocating that every person in Australia have their DNA arbitrarily put into the DNA Bank just in case they commit a crime down the track.
If the police have this rapist’s DNA on file, we may presume they took it for some other offence-related purpose. When a person is not convicted for a crime because of lack of evidence, it doesn’t mean that person didn’t commit the crime. But saying that his DNA cannot subsequently be used to identify a crime that he did commit because he didn’t commit the other one, is a bit like saying “OK, you got off, that time so feel free to go out and re-offend.” Wouldn’t it be more sensible to say “You were lucky that time, you bastard, and we’ll be watching you, so keep your nose clean! If you hurt anyone else, we will be on to you in a flash, because that kind of behaviour is unacceptable and we will not tolerate it.”
